I should probably let the actual parents chime in first, but let me just say I wholeheartedly support what you're doing.
I do have a nagging feeling that a better parent would make sure her children weren't reading anything with a sexual subtext...
Are there such things? Even Disney movies are replete with subliminal cock jokes. When my little one becomes literate, I plan on sending him right to Unfogged and get it over with in one foul swoop. Instead of squirming at every subtle sexual subtext I never imagined would show up in an episode of Franklin the Turtle.
Please tell me "foul swoop" was intentional. Because it's awesome.
She's almost seven, isn't she? If she's old enough to understand it, she's old enough to read it is my rule.
In my experience, a lot of stuff that might give you pause goes over kids' heads at that age. And if it doesn't, then it is time to explain it, at least at some simple level. I highly doubt the bondageey things will register, at least in the way you are concerned about.
Yeah, perhaps quotes around "foul" would have made me seem less like a potential idiot.
I watched All My Children from the time I was five, although I leave it to everyone to decide whether I'm a heartening specimen of the flower of American womanhood or a cautionary example. When I have kids I want them to move freely through the culture but to constantly talk to them about what they're being told and the motivations for the telling. My upbringing was not nearly feminist enough. It was anti-capitalist though.
I was around Sally's age when I first learned about sex; I had known the sperm-and-egg stuff for a while, but I was still somewhat confused and would say things like, "What I don't understand is how the sperm gets in the woman's body in the first place." So eventually my parents, perhaps frustrated with hearing a six-year-old say stuff like that, got me a book that explained it all. I still didn't catch sexual subtext, or really understand anything except straightforward intercourse, for a few more years.
4 pretty much states my thinking -- my parents exercised no control at all over what I was reading, and I managed to fail to understand almost everything age inappropriate. It was just weird looking at the WW comics (which are a prurient giggle-fest if you have a foul mind: "And now the scene turns to Wonder Woman's friends in a sorority, spanking their new pledges...") and wondering if maybe I should be doing some censorship.
When I have kids I want them to move freely through the culture but to constantly talk to them about what they're being told and the motivations for the telling.
Good luck! I think even the best of parents really only get the opportunity to share in and discuss a very small fraction of kids' exposure to the world. And even then, for younger children, it's near impossible to know what things they're reading/seeing/hearing are affecting them and how. We'll notice some very obvious things, but very subtle things we might not think of will affect the child and spur in them some theory about how the world works. Even your discussions may make them think about the subject in ways you never intended.
What Carl said. Little kids are sexual beings, and there's sexual subtext in a lot a lot a lot of things. Which means I don't hold out hope for the idea that she won't "get" the bondage imagery. Now, the question of what she'll do with it is an open one, and depends on what other messages she's getting in other areas--will she see it as erotic? Will she see it as symbolic of the need to restrain herself? Will she see it as fabulous that WW always breaks her bonds? Who the hell knows?
10 refers to 2. Although 9 is also right.
No link to some article about Marston? He was a pretty incredible person.
I watched All My Children from the time I was five
Curse you! You have reawakened my aural memory of the General Hospital love theme, dormant these many years.
What Carl said (in 9). And also: I think "obliviousness" is often driven by the child's unconscious instinct or understanding of what he/she is ready to absorb. I can remember rereading things at 12 and suddenly noticing things that had gone completely over my head at 8 or 9.
And for the record, the only book that ever seriously creeped me out as a child (aside from Roald Dahl, who I kept on reading anyway), was The Lonely Doll. Later events (don't have the link, sorry) have suggested that I was just picking up on the weird and seriously unhealthy family dynamic at work between the author and her mother/collaborator. Blech.
Obligatory link. Read the whole thing, esp. this one re: bondage (SFW, more or less).
The moral being, maybe, what Carl said in 2.
I just saw and reread the Lonely Doll yesterday! I was thinking about buying it for my nieces and nephew remembering how, as a kid, I was fascinated by the photographs. But as I stood in the store reading it again after not having read or thought about it for decades, I felt some of the threats and fears in my own childhood popping up. I passed on buying it.
I remember picking up my mother's copy of Gawaine and the Green Knight when I was about 7. Not only did I not catch all of the weird sexual relationships, I didn't even realize I was reading the book in the Northern dialect Middle English. And no, my mother had no idea about it. So I figure it's pretty much impossible to predict what kids will read or understand.
I was, however, very disturbed by The Runaway Bunny.
What is going on today? Apparently Tia is drunk or sated, because once upon a time, a sentence like
. Except that I looked at the book the other night, and man oh man is it weird, weird stuff. All sorts of bondagey things going on, and just general bizarrenesswould have got one at least one scolding. Meanwhile, Idealist, our resident conservative is remembering his hippie roots and coming out in favor of talking the kid through the bondage.
The answer is clear. If Sally asks any worrisome questions at all, you should take the comics, douse them with lighter fluid, set them on fire, and scream, "Burn, Devil Woman, burn!" If you don't emotionally scar your children when they are young, it is much harder to do so down the line.
Uh, SCMT, I think, to the extent possible, it is perfectly reasonable to want to sequester children from sex stuff, BDSM all the moreso because it's not something you can explain to them or they are competent to understand. And don't worry, though I am sometimes drunk, I am never sated. Rawr.
When I was six I read my parents' copy of Dr. Spock's best-selling baby book, and I indeed was breaking a code. The code to All of Parenthood!
I used to watch Days of our Lives with my mom. And 20 years later, I caught an episode and still, no one in Salem knows that Stefano is the bad guy. Geez.
My 2 year old son's favorite fictional characters are Tigger and Gromet. But we've largely confined viewing of Wallace and Gromet to shorts that focus on Wallace's inventions going haywire and one longer one where they go to the moon because, well, they're out of cheese. I let him watch a different one the other day that features a terminator like cyborg dog villain. Scared the crap out of my boy, made me feel like worst parent ever for not properly previewing. Watching him start to run around with the slightly older boys who are doing Jungian reenactments of Lord of the Flies by the monkey bars is very unsettling. And we took him to church today, which is even freakier in its way than letting a kid look at vintage wonder woman.
The culture is out there, its all hitting them in ways we don't even know. Sometimes I want a societal V-chip so my son can be a 21st century Sidhartha or something. But that's not the answer. Bitch is right, you don't know the extent to which a lot of stimuli are helping to build ladders or planting mine fields. Kids are resilient. On the other hand, the Amazon reviews say Gloria Steinem read these comics when she was your daughter's age and look how she turned out. (I kid).
And runaway bunny is mondo disturbing. Especially the way the picture of the mommy bunny fishing for the baby bunny with the carot shows up in Good Night Moon. You will never get away from her, so you might as well just have a carrot.
2, 4, 9, 10. Comics are something I've had in common with my daughter, our secret references. My advantage is that I can still clearly remember stories and often individual panels from forty years ago, sight unseen. I must have pored over them again and again for that to be true. Her reading, consistent with modern understanding, is much more knowing and accepting of neurosis and perversity. She loved The Adventures of Kavelier and Klay; she enjoys thinking of Bruce Wayne as a sicko.
Kids are resilient
I for one am extremely brittle.
Hey BTW I am reading The Modesto Youngster The Last Battle for her bedtime stories now (not my pick! We read the first 4 Narnia books a while back and then laid off them -- but now she got this from her school library and wants to hear it -- and I certainly want to encourage her in seeking books out in the library and reading them -- so here we are) and it has some pretty trippy stuff in it. But TMY is loving it and is experiencing the grand clash of Good and Evil in more homely proportions. "Shift" she says, speaking of the ape who signifies the Antichrist, "makes bad decisions."
"Shift" she says, speaking of the ape who signifies the Antichrist, "makes bad decisions."
Meaning that this ape makes decisions which promote the bad, or that its grasp of instrumental reason is poor?
I like the Runaway Bunny! Admittedly, I make up my own words, because the language has no rhythm to it. The mama should say, every other page, "then I will catch you and take you home," playfully.
Before we had runaway bunny we had Goodnight Moon. And that picture, absent any context, really did cause my Mother in Law the mental health professional to comment. I think her points were that canibalism and deceipt were not good bedtime themes. And it was pretty trippy.
Adults do have filthier minds than children, though. Try reading the Biggles books as an adult without wanting to make jokes about clutching the co-pilot's joystick -- jokes which would never have occurred to me when I was a child at a single sex boarding school.
My favorites are "big nut-brown hare" and "little nut-brown hare" in Did I Ever Tell You How Much I Love You? I cannot imagine how that book got to be a best-seller, because I am incapable of reading it without snorts and guffaws.
Meaning that this ape makes decisions which promote the bad, or that its grasp of instrumental reason is poor?
The former. I think to get a more precise reading of Lewis' story-line you would need to capitalize Bad -- I do not think TMY is doing this yet and that's fine with me.
I had
this wonder women book when I was a kid. The stories are very wierd. Apparently, 90% of the readers of wonder women comics in the 40s were boys.
You might not want to tell your kids that you and your husband are married, because that has kind of a sexual subtext to it.
Hell, I wonder if we can backtrack on that one.
38: You can't tell me you hadn't already realized that.
Nope. You've just wrecked a book I enjoyed reading to my daughter (as opposed to "Animal Kisses," which is Teh Boring).
Oh. I think I may also have just freaked out your wife by messaging "you" about nut-brown hairs via im. I apologize for wrecking your home life, Chopper.
(as opposed to "Animal Kisses," which is Teh Boring)
This was the prequel to "Animal Sex"?
Also: benton, could you remind me where in Goodnight Moon there is cannibalism and deceit? I am just remembering "three little bears sitting in chairs, and a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush" -- is the mush made of rabbits? Is the old lady in the rocking chair lying about something to her bedridden grandchild? Is the telephone about to ring with news of the child's mother, who has been killed and eaten by cannibal rabbits, and the old lady will tell the child it was a message from the angel rabbits, that mommy has joined them?
I think that kids need some of the messed-up and terrifying stuff -- is there any body of literature more consistently sadistic and perverse than fairy tales, for instance?
45 just made my day.
Why do you hate Chopper, DW?
Here is something kinda awesome. It is by Nancy Graham of Kingston, NY, who is aiming to "explore dream states through dream-based writing and somniloquies."
I think that kids need some of the messed-up and terrifying stuff
Und tell me about your relationship wiz ze children, Dr. Bettelheim.
"Except that I looked at the book the other night, and man oh man is it weird, weird stuff. All sorts of bondagey things going on, and just general bizarreness...."
Jeepers, I'da toldja about William Moulton Marston if you'd asked. Try the Seventies and Eighties WW for feminist approach.
"My plan is to ignore this feeling and let them read whatever they want to, but I am not entirely sure I'm doing the right thing."
It worked fine for me; my parents let me read all the sexually explicit stuff (and anything else), at any age, including single-digit, and I came out fine in that area. And they put the paperbacks of Masters & Johnson and Kinsey and such on the low shelves. I think I benefited no end from being able to read the stuff at around age 7 and then later, and not have to ask questions. (But neither did only slightly later finding my dad's porn hurt me, or my attitudes towards feminism and women, so far as I can tell, or any woman has ever told me, although some object to porn [but, then, there's porn I object to, as well; just not the inherent evil of portrayals of sex].)